Bands playing Not so Live ....OT

A

aslo

New member
Sorry if this is off topic for this forum, but i had to ask a question to get it off my chest. Ive recently seen some new emo type bands perform live, or somewhat live. This includes the infamous Fall out Boy.

Ive played music and performed for over thirty years, so i like to check out what the band is doing musically. Last week i saw a semi pro emo type band playing, two guitars, bass and drums. In order to look cute, they all start clapping their hands over their heads. Meanwhile, the bass line that was throughout the song, kept going, as well as guitar and even a bit of a horn section. All while their hands were in the air! They are that good. Dont even have to touch their instruments.

So my question is, does anyone know what techniques are used here? Are they constantly playing along with a recording of themeselves, a mix of live and not live? Midi?
Just curious.
Its also interesting to hear vocal harmonies, when no one is near a mic, or even singing for that matter.
Any experts on this fake live out there?

Thanks
 
hmmm...that's petty odd. its seems obvious that the music is pre-recorded. most bands that do that go to great lengths to hide that fact. unless they we're totally goofing around, they might be a bunch of idiots.
 
Robertt8 said:
unless they we're totally goofing around, they might be a bunch of idiots.
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The average person at a big emo show is a girl 14-18 years old, if that tells you anything.
 
So many bands use some pre-recorded tracks or a MIDI sequence. As someone indicated most bands try to be discreet. I've been in a couple of bands that "cheated" - I did not last long in either band because to me - the joy of live performance is the give and take of vamping (rather than being locked to a sequence).

Although I must admit the bands I was in that sequenced (and one that played to pre-recorded tapes - which was back in the 70's before MIDI) sounded really good, and made really good money - so I guess the ends justifies the means :D
 
I had a four piece band that would, on occassional songs, send a click to the drummer along with a MIDI to the PA so that some important string parts in the middle or something like that would just pop up in the middle of the song and nowhere else. Very cool actually when it worked and we only did it on a few songs .... like we did Thriller and used it for some parts.
Also, it'snot all that easy ..... most drummers can't do it very well and everyone else has to be able to exactly follow the drummer or they'll drag him off the tempo and then it's a mess.
About a month ago I was opening for Edgar Winter and he used a 4 piece band and recorded horns and vocals!
I was very dissappointed ..... but on local levels there's no way to pay big bands so the trick is making a midi gig sound live and it can be done ..... it just takes a lot of work to get things grooving and feeling live.
 
mikeh said:
Although I must admit the bands I was in that sequenced (and one that played to pre-recorded tapes - which was back in the 70's before MIDI) sounded really good, and made really good money - so I guess the ends justifies the means :D
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Are you Milli or Vanilli. Oh.......no that was the 80's.. :D :D
 
Thanks for the replies

Thanks folks, very interesting. So this is pretty widespread then, not just emos? Very big acts?
I can understand part of it. For one thing no one wants a bad show. No one wants to pay 200. for tickets and hear terrible sound. So what happens if the bass player was very doped for four days and now can barely stand, or the guitarist has intense diarhea... the show must go on, and to add to that, the show must sound good.
So are we saying that MOST professional bands are doing this live?
What exactly is recorded i wonder? It would be advantagous to have vocals if the singers throat is shot.
It would seem as far as the emo bands, maybe a basic foundation, bottom so to speak. Maybe some drums, bass, rhythm guitar, and anything they add to it live is gravy??
Any more info on this is appreciated.
 
boingoman said:
The average person at a big emo show is a girl 14-18 years old, if that tells you anything.
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i hate to admit it, but thats probably the audience that made me get into being a rock star in the first place.
 
aslo said:
Thanks folks, very interesting. So this is pretty widespread then, not just emos? Very big acts?
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I wouldn't say that it is everywhere. But there is always the element of the show, the desire to WOW!! with certain acts and genres, such as Eddie Van Halen playing with 20 cabs on stage, and most are empty, or Billy Gibbons from ZZ Top, with his sound coming from a Demeter isolation box offstage, and most if not all his onstage gear being props. And the widespread live use of drum triggers and samples in modern metal and country concerts.

And certainly, some bands use selected backing tracks with great success, and it adds to rather than detracts from the experience.

The emo thing, I think that's a symptom of under-practiced musicians being put on the road to play shows, at the request of whatever money-machine owns them. I have worked a number of those semi-big emo shows, and the range runs from tastefully-done orchestral tracks to blatant cases where the band plays and sings absolutely nothing live, and the engineer's job is simply to unmute vocal mics between songs so the band can talk to the crowd.

The difference is transparency and honesty, to me. That's why I mentioned the audience. It is pretty easy to stick a bunch of emos onstage, start the CD, and get a bunch of young girls to think the band rocks. Not so easy when the audience is more discriminating. And I can't imagine a band like say, Steely Dan or a guy like Eric Clapton agreeing to do it at all. Then, they don't have to, they can actually play.

This isn't a new thing by any means, it has happened in the pop world for a long time.
 
My band has had such a hard time finding a bass player that we just have a recorded bass part and I (the drummer) play to a click and send the bass line to the FOH. It worked so well, we added keys and are thinking about vocal harmonies.

There is no way for us to keep it a secret, there is just me the guitar player and the singer.
 
Back in the 80's there was a big scare in the bass community. We thought we were going to be replaced by sequencers and keyboards. I even kept my guitar chops up. :D
Luckily that phase passed and bass guitar is alive and kicking.
Now I bet if I wanted to I could gig every night of the week. Never mind I did that in the 80's and I will never do it again!
 
LOTS of shows are canned. You would be shocked. Lead vocals even. Some even have additional musicians backstage, YES used to have another keyboard player that you never saw. Some are literally just tape and 90% of it is canned.
 
What is happening to the freedom of a live show now-a-days. If I wanted to hear the record, I wouldn't be paying for a ticket to go see the show. The audience feels a closer bond with the artist if they feel like they are getting something special or intimate. I fear that we are taking away the very things that got us all interested in music in the first place. Music is no longer an experience, emotion or state of mind, it is a product. I don't know, maybe I'm just getting old.
 
DavidK said:
LOTS of shows are canned. You would be shocked. Lead vocals even. Some even have additional musicians backstage, YES used to have another keyboard player that you never saw. Some are literally just tape and 90% of it is canned.
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When I saw Aerosmith in... '97 I think... they definitely had a keyboard player off-stage, but clearly visible, as he was very close to the stage on the left side. Isn't quite as bad as the band playing to a click-track and flying in a pile o' parts (if you think that's bad, that is)... but sneaky nonetheless.

I can see a use for that sort of thing if you just can't muster the talent to play the parts you need, and I know that plight all too well... I can't find musicians in my area that play my style of music to save my life... at least ones who are also looking for others to play with, that is.

If you're doing it because your lead singer can't sing your own damn songs, that's another story... you might want to investigate other options at that point :eek:
 
Again...

"Artists" performing to prerecorded tracks and the "major" labels want to blame MP3's for lack of sales? How about finding some real musicians?

I'd much rather see additional performers off the side of the stage than have pre-recorded tracks. I've been in bands than have done both. We never added guitars, or vocals, but limited samples, keyboards parts etc. We originally had a guy who really wasn't a musician that was really into what we were doing. We'd show him what we wanted, where, and he'd make it to all the rehearsals , and play it at the shows. Eventually we were nice enough to let him on stage with us. :D Then after a bit, he quite. We were never able to find a replacement, because any "real" keyboard player would play too much... and would "waste" their talents on the odd sounds, or simple held chords we needed. We were kinda forced to go sequenced.

I'm "O.K." with it to an extent. It can't replace, or be a fall back for anything someone "should" be capable playing or singing. You have to have the ability FIRST. I know it seems contradictory, but in my twisted little head there's a very fine line between acceptable use and unacceptable abuse.
 
RightOnMusic said:
then he shouldn't be playing in a band.
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Well that would be the end of the Rolling Stones and quite a few others.


Does anyone know about the tech aspect of all of this? Is this a midi to hardware situation? Some of you mentioned "tape", i think that used to be the old media im not sure. On a side note here, i was recently shocked to see
that selling my tascam porta studio on ebay would bring in about 25.00 if im lucky.
Anyway, just wondering if there were any sound people out there that actually ran a board and did this kind of fakery at a big show, and how it worked.


I find the extra keyboard player difficult to believe by the way, but hey its a weird world. I just cant see using another person, when it can be all handled by digits.
Some of it as i said, i can understand, bad throat, thousands of people paid big bucks for the tickets, and so on.
 
aslo said:
Does anyone know about the tech aspect of all of this?
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I do, I do, Pick me! :D

On the shows I have done it has been Pro Tools. Josh Groban and Mannheim Steamroller do it, I have played with both many times. One time, Josh messed up a bit and they brought up a vocal track to cover. I play violin, and he had a string section on PT to beef it up at times. Likewise, Steamroller uses a movie in concert, so the tracks are on pro tools to sync up to video. They play along.

If you ever see violin players wearing headphones or ear plugs, there is a prerecorded track involved :D We hear a click. Sometimes we hear instructions from a music director like " measure 54 now" in case somebody messes up.

Josh has monitors in front of him, video monitors. It has the words to the songs on them phonetically spelled out, since they are in different languages. Sarah Brightman (broadway) uses PT, its a VERY complicated show and there is a lot happening synthwise. Its all on PT.
 
aslo said:
Does anyone know about the tech aspect of all of this?
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It can work several different ways.
1. Drummer has a laptop running Cubase (or some other DAW) He listens to a click track in his in-ears and sends the extra backing tracks to the FOH. For a really cheap way of doing this, get an Ipod and record the backing tracks on the left and the click track on the right. Get adapters so you can feed the left channel to the FOH and the right channel to a headphone amp for the drummer.

2. The whole show is pre recorded. Everything is running from a computer at FOH. The mixer is fed enough separate tracks so the FOH guy can mix. This is for big shows and normally the light show is also pre-programed and synced via midi timecode. Sometimes even video is synced up the same way.

3. any combination of the first two.
 
Thanks to DavidK and Farview. Tell me more !

So what kind of percentages do you think we are looking at live/recorded?
Would you say that most major performers, the majority are using say 75% recorded material playing live?
Do you think most people are still singing live, or maybe 50/50 ?

Boy what would happen if something seriously went wrong?(you know the way it happens to you on a constant basis.)

Would they have three hard drive backups or something like that?

Thanks for the enlightening.Keep it coming.
 
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